Kids, in 2012
by THECURSOR
Summary: Maria Hill is about to become Deputy Director of SHIELD, which means telling her friends who she really is...
1. Robin and Hawkeye

_A/N Sorry everyone, I screwed up a chapter replacement and accidentally removed the first chapter. All fixed now._

_"I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk about this because it still might be classified but..._

_Kids, in the summer of 2012, your Aunt Robin joined the Avengers. Also, apparently her name isn't Robin and oh, she's also not Canadian. In fact, most of the stuff I've been telling over the years was apparently a lie..."_

"I'm a spy."

Barney blinked, Ted's jaw dropped open, Lily had no reaction, and Marshall tried not to have a reaction.

Then everyone started laughing, like I expected them to. When I joined the CIA, they told me that my cover was "reporter" and that was what I told everyone I did. I was still Maria but I was also "a reporter". Then I went to work for SHIELD, I was reassigned to deep cover and "I'm a reporter" became "You're Robin Scherbatsky, you work at a TV station, four days a week you'll be on camera and on the fifth and sixth day you'll work for us." I got Sundays off.

I didn't expect that "Robin" was going to have friends and boyfriends and an apartment and a life and a career. Slowly over the course of several years, my life as a spy got weird. I assumed that when I went to Japan to kill those North Korean terrorists that my relationship with these people would just end quietly but there I was, back in New York, still Robin.

Now it was time to come clean, I was going to be a Deputy Director and that meant going public and I just needed to actually be Maria Hill to the people that I cared about.

Coming out of the closet wasn't going very well.

"Oh sure! Robin the spy!" Marshall laughed as the rest of the table chuckled.

"My name isn't Robin, it's Maria." That just got more laughs.

"Double Oh Robin, Canadian Secret Agent, protecting the people of Calgary!" Barney was in tears as he said that in his fake Canadian accent.

"Shakin' not stirred yah hooser!" Lily replied.

"I'm not Canadian either, that was my cover id. My name is Maria Hill, I'm a level 9 SHIELD Agent and-" More laughter, clearly she needed to prove it. She reached into her bag for her comm link. "Mother Bird to Hawkeye, pull the trigger."

"Roger Mother Bird, trigger pulled." Was the reply and suddenly an arrow flew through the pub window, past a sea of bar patrons, and right into their favorite booth. It embedded itself in the table in front of Ted with a small note attached to the tip: "She's telling the truth. -Signed CB"

Everyone stopped laughing.


	2. Barney and The Black Widow

A/N: Updated by popular demand

_"Kids, in the fall of 2012, your Aunt Robin (who is actually your Aunt Maria) invited some of her friends from work to our Halloween party. This is the story of how one of them broke your Uncle Barney's arm..."_

The wet snapping sound was, unfortunately, very familiar and I found myself rushing towards the other side of the roof in the hope of stopping further violence.

Getting my "Robin" Friends and my "Maria" friends in the same room wasn't exactly my idea. It was Steve's

Hawkeye let my situation slip to Steve who just wouldn't stop nagging me until he met one of my normal people friends and when he did, Ted accidentally invited him to our Halloween party. So Steve dragged the world's most elite fighting force along to a party filled with 30 somethings on Ted's roof..

And for some reason, at no point during this slow progression to madness, did I say "no". I just let a super soldier who is old enough to be my grand father get really excited about a Halloween party with regular people.

I suppose it was because deep down, I understood why Steve wanted to go.

Steve Rogers went from being a scrawny nobody, becoming a super human propaganda piece, a war machine, and finally in to a time traveler in the space of just a year and a half. There was no time for him to have a life, to be a regular guy, no time to celebrate the fact that he helped single handedly defeat fascism or to mourn the friends he lost. One minute he was in a war, the next he was awake in 2012. And after waking up in the future everyone he met was either a spy, a monster, a cyborg, or a demi god. He didn't meet anyone normal and he didn't get to relax.

So the chance to hang out with people who didn't want to kill him or enlist him in a battle to save the world was very refreshing. The poor guy just desperately wanted some new friends. So I said yes out of pity.

I really should have said no.

Oh sure the evening started out okay. Barney and Tony Stark got along wonderfully (as expected) and they spent most of the night trading "I did this with this model in this tropical country" stories and I caught Stark shouting "Legendary!".

I tried to tune them out.

Banner and Ted were two of the more nerdy guys in the room and they spent a lot of time talking about Star Wars (shock) while Steve stood in the corner, smiling like an idiot. The poor guy was just happy to be included in something. (I made a mental not to get Steve a life).

The surprise of the night was Thor and Marshall. One of them was a mighty Viking war god and the other was a sweet, corny lawyer. And yet the minute Thor heard Marshall's last name, he treated him like he was a long lost brother or something. "Aye, I should've known that you had Nordic blood, I see the shape of your ancestors within you. What is your trade, Marshall of Minnesota?"

"I'm a lawyer."

"A scholar of laws? A noble profession!" And then they spent the next two hours getting drunk and screaming "Ericsson!" (something about wanting Marshall's dad to hear them in Valhalla).

Before you ask, yes, Lily did flirt with Steve for absolutely no reason. ("I"m married, not blind!")

Things didn't get weird until Natasha showed up.

I had actually hoped that she wouldn't come at all, since Natasha could be a little...intense sometimes and "intense redheads" are one of my fiancee's little emotional triggers. But Natasha and Clint rolled through the door two hours late and already drunk. I don't know what kind of weird, co-dependent assassin things they do when they aren't at Avengers tower but I knew it was going to spill over into my "Robin" life...possibly violently.

I tried to keep Barney away from her and I hoped she would just mind her own god damned business but Barney was like a moth to a cleavage shaped light bulb. He walked over, he leaned towards her and...well...

"YOU BROKE MY ARM!"

"Then you shouldn't have been staring at my tits you little pervert." Natasha said.

Thor laughed, this was actually funny to him.

I just sighed and grabbed the first aid kit.


	3. Ted and Captain America

_"Kids, your Aunt Robin (who is really your Aunt Maria) had just introduced us to Captain America, the world's very first super soldier. I admit, we may have taken advantage of our new friend..."_

"Are you sure this isn't cheating?" Steve whispered as we handed him the small plastic disk that came with his entry form.

"Cheating? Of course not!" Ted said as he patted the septuagenerian super man on the back.

"But these guys are just regular and I'm...well...I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing."

Actually, it was cheating but since telling everyone at the 4th Annual Central Park Frisbee Golf Championship that Steve Rogers was really Captain America was a Federal Offense, I was pretty sure that doing "the right thing" in this case was lying through our teeth.

Of course if something stupid happened, I could probably blame this entire debacle Ted Mosby. He was the one who managed to sneak into my "Maria" cell phone and pull out Steve's phone number and he was the one who talked poor gullible Steve into competing as a ringer so that Ted could get an all inclusive stay at the Windmark Hotel ("It's an architectural wonder, Robin!").

"Just go out there and have fun." Ted said as he clapped his new friend/ringer on the back and held out the small plastic discs Steve would be using the wipe the floor with half of New York's frisbee throwing population.

I could tell Steve was still conflicted, on the one hand the poor guy needed a friend who wasn't a superhero really badly, on the other he was still Steve Rogers, the world's most honest sucker. In the end I guess Steve's need to please someone seemed to win the day and he grabbed the little discs with a nervous smile.

_"Golfers to your tees!"_ Said the man at the loud speaker and Steve walked up to the starting line alongside...well, hippies. Lots of hippies. He looked ridiculously bland standing next the more interesting weirdos that New York City had to offer. I'm a little ashamed to say this but I considered telling Ted to make the reservations now because Steve Rogers was going to wipe the floor with these stringy vegans.

But really the other guys didn't do too badly. Most of them were practiced frisbee golfers who made excellent strategic shots towards the first hole and a couple landed practically within a few feet of the "green".

Finally it was Steve's turn. He looked over nervously at Ted, who flashed a supportive thumbs up, then tossed his frisbee as hard as he could. It bounced off a tree, off a light pole, and then hit the basket.

Then it kept going. It sliced through the metal chains around the basket and buried itself in the ground.

"Whoops." Steve said, as if he'd knocked over a table or spilled some milk.

I groaned.


	4. Marshall and Thor

A/N: Sorry for the wait everybody, I wanted to hold off on posting another chapter until I saw Spiderman, thinking of making this a three way cross over, let me know if that's okay with you.

_Kids, in 2012, we became really good friends with Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Actually that's not true: we were his best friends! Thor was like a 24-7 party and since he didn't have that many mortal friends on this "plane of existence", Thor hung out with us all the time. Of course, because we were friends, we helped one another out of jams..."_

Fun fact: Asgardian Gods and Olympian Gods do not get along, which is something I wish I had known before Nick Fury insisted that I recruit Hercules to join the Avengers "B" team.

The knowledge that there was an inter dimensional race of aliens out there called "Asgardians", lead us to look around for other groups of mythic space gods.

Two phone calls, 600 million dollars, and a secret wormhole project out of the Cheyanne Mountain later and SHIELD had it's very own Greek Super hero, the demi-god Hercules of Olympus. Things went just fine and Hercules was more than happy to join a team of super heroes. In fact he was the cheapest member of the Avengers team: as long as there was beer, wine, and a sexy lady waiting for him after the fight, Herc did whatever we needed.

Then Thor got back from his latest trip to Asgard and all of the shit hit all of the fans.

Olympians and Asgardians have a blood feud going back centuries, they hate each other. H-A-T-E. Period. It took less than a minute during their first team meeting together before Thor tried to cave in Hercules' skull. And it only got worse. They bickered like school girls on missions, started fights in the locker rooms, threw punches at strategy meetings. The whole thing became a crisis when they started ambushing each other in the streets and fighting in back alleys to "prove their worth".

When two normal men act like meat heads, they're usually the only ones who get hurt. When two men who can lift a sedan over their heads get into a fist fight, it causes property damage and that property damage is why I found myself sitting in a New York City Jail, watching Thor through the bars of his cell.

He tried to get my attention, even dropped something that might've been a joke if I was still in the mood to hear it. I ignored him. Thor was in my dog house right now and I didn't trust myself to talk to the guy.

I think we were both really thankful when the guards lead Marshall Eriksen into the room.

"Hail Marshall, Scion of Erik's Line!"

"Hey, Thor, how's it going?"

"Not well, friend Marshall, the earthly authorities have waylaid me for brawling within the Garden Square."

Marshall's face had that same amusing, blank look when I tried to explain how the Canadian parliament created coalition governments. So I knew he was going to need some kind of translation for Thor's crazy Shakespearean speak. "He and Hercules got into a fist fight at Madison Square Garden."

"Aye, the Grecian Blackguard ambushed me while Selvig and I watched the Knickerbockers battle the Heat."

"So you got into a fight during a Knicks game and they arrested you?"

"Aye."

His confusion didn't go away and I could see the wheels spinning around in that big Minnesota skull. "I thought you guys could just do some of that SHIELDy stuff and get them both released."

"I tried, Thor refused." Thor who had the good sense to look sheepish, "He wants to plead guilty."

"I have broken Earth law, to shun my punishment for such offenses would be dishonorable." I could hear that same, stubborn honor in his voice that would make "And though, I am loathe to admit it, the Son of Zeus is also not without honor either. Our quarrel is with each other and not with Earth, we wish to do penance."

I made a motion to the cell at the end of the hallway, where the thick hands and sturdy fingers of Zeus' favorite son waved at us with a polite smile. "Hercules is in the other holding cell; he also wants to plead guilty."

Marshall sighed, "Okay, so what are the charges?" He wasn't a criminal defense attorney; I could tell he was probably getting in over his head.

"I am shamed, friend Marshall." Thor hung his head and his shoulders slumped, "I used the mighty Mjolnir to call a storm on the Olympian dog and it caused great harm to the House of Knickerbocker."

"They caused 4 million dollars in damages." I had to wince when said the words.

Marshall grabbed his chest and I almost called an ambulance, "Four...million...IS THAT IN AMERICAN MONEY?" He looked over at Thor with confusion,"How in the hell did you cause Four Million dollars in damage?"

"Twas a grand storm, son of Eric." There was a glimmer in his eyes as he said that, I made a mental note to make sure his room on the Helipad had the Weather Channel. Thor was clearly a weather porn junkie.

"I can't…I've never…" Marshall was on the edge of a panic attack now, he was obviously regretting ever giving his Nordic buddy his business card, "Isn't there someone else you could-"

"This is a public relations disaster and half of New York want's SHIELD's head. The Mayor of New York is going to evict the Avengers if we don't come up with some way to please everybody all at once." I said, "Marshall, Thor goes before the judge in a half hour. There isn't time for anyone else."

"Are you kidding me? I'm an environmental lawyer, if somebody dumps a bag of trioxin in the river, the most I can do is call for a four year study and threaten a lawsuit!"

Thor reached through the bars and placed his hand on Marshall's shoulder. There was a funny, kind of tender look on the demi god's face. "Friend Marshall, when I came afoul of this city's magistrate, I knew in my heart that you and you alone could deliver me from this shame." He spoke his next words, slowly and quietly, "I know that you are no warrior and you have never faced battle but there are times when greatness calls men to it's bosom." Thor paused so that Marshall could chuckle at the word bosom, then squeezed the smaller man's shoulder. "Friend Marshall...I believe in your greatness."

I watched as a change came over my friend. Marshall's chest puffed up, his jaw drew tight. He straightened his tie and he walked away without a word. I tried to call out after him but Thor stopped me. "Do not bother him." Thor said quietly, "He has the look of a man preparing for war."

* * *

Here's another fun fact about Gods: they all know a trade.

Remember those stories from your child hood? Stories like the Labours of Hercules or the Journeys of Thor? Do you know what they have in common? Work.

Gods and Goddess were all patrons of the tradesman back in the old days and our two patron gods were no different. Thor was a pretty skilled metallurgist and Hercules was once the Bronze Age version of a construction worker, so they both knew their way around a work site. Watching them rebuild Madison Square Garden together was actually kind of fascinating.

It was also great PR. When that Spiderman guy tore up Osborn tower fighting that giant lizard thing, he didn't show up the next day to fix what got broken. Thor and Hercules did show up and they did exactly what Marshall said they would do: perform four million dollars of construction work.

Obviously the Judge laughed at the idea that they could perform that much community service in one day but Thor and Hercules seemed to take that as a challenge.

We had to clear it with the union but once the ink was dry, there were two mighty Gods doing the work of a hundred men alongside a bunch of very impressed construction workers.

The funniest part was the trash talk.

"You are the foulest of scum and you work so slowly that it is like you are standing still!" Thor shouted as he picked up a two ton steel beam with one hand.

"Since you have never seen a real man give a hard day's work, you have no right to complain about the speed with which I perform these labours!" Hercules replied as he pushed an iron rivet into place...without a rivet gun.

"Olympian bastard! Son of One Who Lays with Men!"

"Asgardian Dog! Son of One Who Lays with SHEEP!"

Then Thor raised his hammer and got a little worried there was going to be another fist fight. Wrong, he was just calling down lighting to weld together two pieces of hard steel together. I later asked the foreman how long that kind of work usually takes.

He said two days.

I laughed and wondered how Marshall actually pulled a stunt like this off. I examined several possibilities, turning them over in my mind before I came to the only conclusion that made any sense: Marshall Eriksen was an effing genius.

_A/N Thanks everybody for hanging in there, let me know if you're okay with an appearance by Spider-man in the next one._


End file.
